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"If I'd known he was thinking such terrible things I wouldn't have let the girls near him. Losing the girls was so, so terrible. But to think that it could have been avoided in any way is excruciating."

Ms Hughes will be at Southampton Coroner's Court for the hearing. Her statement will be read to court as she is still too distressed to talk.

She added: "I don't know how I'm going to get through it... Most of the time I just shut the reality out."

Miss Hughes, from the village of Fair Oak in Hampshire, met Cass when she was just 16. She moved in with him two weeks later and within four months she was pregnant.

The couple's relationship began to sour in December last year and after a series of blazing rows Cass left the family home in August. The tragedy unfolded on September 21 after Cass had been allowed to see the children for the first time since the break-up.

Friends and neighbours said the couple had often argued and that Cass appeared depressed in the weeks before his death.

A neighbour, Valerie Frazier, said she called police after receiving a frantic phone call from Miss Hughes saying Cass had called Ms Hughes to say that their babies had "gone to sleep for ever" and that he was about to hang himself.

The funeral into the two girls' deaths was held last month.

Post-mortem examinations concluded the two girls died from smothering and their father from hanging.